Sara Baras, Sadler’s Wells - dance review

Sadler’s Wells’s annual flamenco festival opens with one of the biggest stars of the scene, Sara Baras. A bona fide celeb in Spain, there’s even a Barbie doll modelled on her image.

Far from the land of Barbie, Baras’s show is inspired by the Spanish Constitution of 1812 (nicknamed La Pepa, the title of the show), and designed to “celebrate her country and its women” but really this is a show created only to celebrate Sara Baras. Her footwork is astonishing, not just in its supersonic speed but also her precision accents — she creates melody as well as rhythm. When one barrage of beats perfectly decelerates, leaving us hanging on each drip-fed beat, well, that’s a woman who’s in control.

Baras embodies the idea of La Pepa as freedom, power and self-possession but the show doesn’t exploit its thematic potential. There’s a dramatically atmospheric opening, with black-clad dancers cinematically swirling in the shadows, evoking the chaos of battle in the War of Independence, but the theatrical interest ends right there. Baras is not moving flamenco forward but she has created a great showcase for her own talents.